


Rain at the Tailtean Plains

by Kuro_Ko



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22530034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuro_Ko/pseuds/Kuro_Ko
Summary: A couple of years after the war, the Emperor must pay a visit to long lost family and friends alike.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Kudos: 35





	Rain at the Tailtean Plains

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, this is my first time attempting to write a fic in English. I've been writing for more than 10 years already, though most of my works are in Fanfiction. I've spoken English for several years as well, but never worked up the courage to actually try to publish in this beautiful language. If you find it in you to give this one a shot, I'll be grateful.

The past, more than a place to retreat, used to be a sentence that chased her both on the darkest winter nights and summer noon. In her relentless nightmares, in the shadows that haunted her, persistent. It had tied her hands for years with bindings stronger that the chains in her prison, it had snatched away her joy, but it had given her a purpose that fed her internal turmoil.

It had made her revolt against a fossilized system, at the service of a few and to the detriment of many. And that past had razed Fodlan unequivocally. It had reformed her society, changed history.

Lead her ideals to reality by sheer will.

Will and by a woman that had never left her side.

_Not by her own will, at least._

Now, that past that had taken so much from her, that had given her so much, was an obstacle that she needed to overcome.

The sky was overcast, clouds brewing a storm just like that fateful day a couple of years ago. The Tailtean plains remembered in their landscape the battle better than her in her memory. In the river that flowed splitting the field in north and south she could see the soldiers’ footsteps, knee buried in the mud under their armor’s weight and the frozen punishment that battered the three armies alike.

If she had been on either of their sides, the goddess wouldn’t have planned a worst scenario for them all. But it wasn’t her doing, rather the king of Faerghus riding out to charge at her head on.

As her horse made its way through, unfazed by the blood spilled in that very ground, she watched the stone building that had been a scenery and advantage point for the kingdom’s mage, casting human rage farther than it was thought possible.

On top of that polished stone tiles, of a faint green glow, Ingrid, traitor to her country due to loyalty to her ideals, had pierced his light armor and shed the wizard’s blood until his anger too was transformed into a dim memory.

She halted her mount for a second to look upon the place, her little entourage stopping alongside her.

“Your majesty?”

“Hubert, Galatea house…”

“Received the last annexation of land in reward, as agreed."

“Good.” She wouldn’t be able to pay Ingrid her service in this life. War had proven her skills at length, and her unwavering loyalty to her cause as well. As much as the woman dismissed it, she was in debt to her, to all the Black Eagles Strike Force.

She recognized those turned boulders, broken by the claw of a lost creature, forced by the circumstances of an unjust world. The demonic beasts had shattered everything that laid in their path, a blind and terrible stampede. Everything to be put to rest by the edge of her axe at the end.

She spurred her mare, a fine steed still to be completely tamed, ready to meet fate that day sooner than later.

Next to her on a reddish horse, laconic and huge, Byleth followed her with the casual demeanor she used to have. Despite her calm expression, her hand rested on the handle of her sword. In the distance the remains of a golem, its lion face carved in stone and wood impregnated with magic, could be seen.

A shiver ran down the Emperor’s back in that dark day, the budding storm over them.

Rhea.

Or rather, Seiros.

Descending from the mountains to the forest as a pack of hungry wolves that had smelled blood. Using the desperate onslaught of the Kingdom as a shield and a spear at the same time.

What a disservice she had returned to Dimitri in exchange for all his alms.

Byleth had defeated her with astounding skill, evading defenses, spears and knights alike. Wearing the red and black armor she had given her as a profane banner before the eyes of the false prophet. The sword of the creator in her hands as an extension of her will.

Alongside her, the rest of her knights had retreated before the ashen demon attack, all of them fell back with the woman they had sworn to protect, they had sworn to follow. The woman they worshiped over their lives.

_Her manipulation was worthy of a god._

Her partner stopped, her mount snorted, before shaking its head making the reins and the imperial paraphernalia to resonate. Blue eyes fixed in a point near the small fort where Dimitri had fortified himself with his troops in a last desperate attempt to resist their charge.

“Byleth?” she called, turning her mare to return a few steps back. Its fur was black and white luster, a mount worthy of an emperor.

“Dedue transformed here…” Byleth said, Edelgard bit her bottom lip when she heard the pain and the sadness her voice carried with the memory. With each passing day her emotions become more present, stronger, more visible. Suddenly the woman she knew only at times, moments that she kept close to her heart, the woman who she had fallen in love for between those seconds hidden in their interactions, began to show more and more to the rest.

In this occasion, it was sorrow to the loss of a friend. The loss of a student for a teacher that had taken her role in caring for and sheltering them from the world seriously.

Dedue, loyal to the bitter end, willing to sacrifice everything he considered precious for his King. Her mind provided her with Hubert’s image, irremediably. What would he have given for his Emperor?

What had he already given for her?

“Yes, he did.” Answered finally, after long seconds that had spread like the cold as it descended at night down the side of a snow-covered mountain. Her mind fixed on the huge black beast made out of flesh and steel. It had been a challenge to bring him down, her body was scarred from that encounter. Scars that crossed the oldest and most orderly marks of the experiments Thales and his entourage had done on her.

They shared the silence for a little longer, thunder and lightning warning of the storm that was about to fall, indifferent messengers to their terrifying news. Both women didn’t need words, when everything to say was expressed in gestures and confidences. A language learned over the years they have enjoyed each other’s company.

“Your majesty…” Hubert had come forward; his black horse scratched the ground impatiently. “I believe unwise to defy weather today.”

“Very well, let’s finish this at once, then.” She gestured one of the squires that accompanied them, youngsters that Ferdinand had chosen from different corners of the Empire in an effort to implement her meritocracy and gather commoners and nobles alike. The teenager, barely in age to be away from his parents, ran to meet her, holding the reins of her mare with a sloppy bow. A couple more squires did the same with Byleth and Hubert’s horses. The Emperor of Fodlan dismounted fluently and gracefully. Her red cape whispering its secrets to the wind.

Her hands undid the little bundle in her saddle, producing a bouquet of blue hibiscus, a flower that couldn’t grow so far north of the country.

A reminder of an ancient promise.

Hubert placed himself on her left side promptly, a long and tall shadow, a pillar of strength and support in each of the stages on her life. Even in this very moment, where she could feel his disapproval. The dark hand that moved the necessary threads so his Emperor would be victorious. Byleth, her eyes still on the place where Dedue had fallen, let their hands and shoulders brushed gently her right side. Both towered by her side, immovable pillars, essential sustenance of the Emperor.

Fodlan didn’t know how much it owed those two people. Edelgard would make sure that history books registered them, their names next to hers on the new dawn of the Empire.

She covered the meters that separated her from her destiny without hesitation, the dark and dense mud beneath her feet cushioning the ringing of her boots. The bouquet of blue flowers in contrast to her red clothing.

Soon the stone, polished by years of erosion, received her steps and made them resonate again in the world, a further reminder of the weight that her decisions and actions had unleashed on Fodlan. The shadow of an Emperor who had begun her reign with an iron fist and a heart guarded by the unlikely love of a teacher. She blinked a couple of times, her lilac eyes returning to the present instead of getting lost in the maelstrom of her stormy past memories.

_We are to learn from the past, not to get lost in it._ She repeated herself, her hands firm without betraying the tribulations of her mind.

At the center of that formation, guided by human hand, impregnated with healing magic, a shelter and a stronghold to defend his home, lay Dimitri’s grave. Tiles around it had been cracked and turned by the war. More than a grave, it was a memento, his lance split in two marking the place where he had fallen for the last time. The steel blade deeply buried in the ground, the dark wood of the handle defied the sky, a final challenge from a King fallen in battle. A man that at some point Edelgard would’ve called brother.

A human being tormented by the injustices of a plan he never truly knew.

His body did not rest there, but with his father and stepmother. It couldn’t have been otherwise. Dimitri was in the Kingdom’s capital, the city that remained standing despite the fire that devastated it and the clash between the armies that had besieged it. In the palace, his ashes now in communion with those of his ancestors. Perhaps now the dead could not poison his ear with whispering of despair and revenge.

Perhaps now he was free of the hatred that had consumed all of his rational thoughts.

She placed the bouquet between the two shafts of the broken spear. It was not Areadbhar, now stored in the caste in Fhirdiad, but the weapon he used to wield in the academy and years later in his training. A steel lance capable of withstanding the thrusts and inhuman strength of its wearer. She set a knee to the floor, her right elbow resting on her bent knee, Edelgard registered the small monument that graced the King’s short years.

_Dimitri, too noble, too pious, too manipulable for your own good…_

In harsher winters they had played together, they had spent a couple of seasons trying to be a family. Forging slow but steady ties, bringing them closer in the same way that family members stayed together.

Until Thales had returned and taken her out of that reality, from that dream that had allowed her to be a girl for a couple of years. A childhood that had been snatched away too soon; an innocence that had been tainted without a trace of guilt. That past she could not run away from, but with which she could not still be at peace. How could she resign herself to live in a world that would allow such monstrous thing to happen to a child? Dimitri wouldn’t listen to her, neither to what others told him.

At the end, both of them had fought for what they had believed.

Byleth crouched down beside her, one hand on her shoulder, her eyes lost in the hibiscus that swayed almost imperceptibly with the breeze.

“He was a good King.”

“He would’ve been a brilliant monarch, hadn’t he let himself be consumed by hate.”

“Do you see yourself in him?”

“I guess so, in a way…” Hubert, behind them, snorted strong enough for them to hear. His discontent was known to the Emperor and, despite everything, a wave of appreciation was born from her heart for her master spy. The man never lost faith in her.

Byleth was silent, her warmth keeping her company without demanding anything in return. The gratitude Edelgard felt extended to her as well.

Looking at the grave of a man long gone would offer no answers or comfort, but she couldn’t help but keep her eyes on it, wondering what would’ve been if. Reenacting situations that would never happen. That, according to the Emperor’s standards, was a day wasted.

She put her hand to her belt, short weapons rested there, almost invisible to the poorly trained eye. In it was the dagger Dimitri gave her before she was taken away, the blade she had forgotten how had ended up in her hands until recently. She pulled it out with a practiced twist of her wrist, the metal adorned by the blacksmith’s ability resonating as it came clean from its sheath.

Gray, like the day upon them, sharp and ready to fulfill its purpose.

Edelgard took the sheath as well from her belt, returning the blade to its rest, admiring all the details as she turned the weapon in her hands. She knew the instrument perfectly; it had accompanied her through the darkest and brightest hours of the path she had taken. She knew how the hold had been dented in a particular area, she knew the scratches that covered part of the sheath near the tip. Her hands had marked the hilt with her sweat and blood.

It was a good weapon, one that had helped her forge her own path, separated from the church and the rest of Emperors before her. Now it was time to let it rest, too.

She put it next to the flowers, an improvised and strange altar, but fitting to the memory of the man.

She allowed herself to smile, a barely visible curvature of her lips, before standing up and offering a hand to Byleth so she would rise next to her. She wouldn’t bring revenge to the dead, but gifts to appease them in their memories. That was her way of dealing with the past and moving forward. To hurt in retaliation would never heal the scars on her body, nor bring back those she had lost.

It took her more than five years of war to understand that.

The golden crown pointed the sky when she looked up, the cold promised rain fell on them calmly, without haste in its eagerness to soak them. Cold, austere, merciless. In a way it reminded her of herself.

A hand in hers brought her out of her daydreaming.

It was true, she could not be the indifferent rain, not when her path was shared with the woman who started as her teacher, became her advisor, her friend and now her lover.

“Thanks for joining me, I think we still have to pay our respects to a couple more memories in this place before the day is over.”  
  
An affectionate smile accompanied the “As you wish, your majesty.”

That day was the memory of the living to honor the dead, not the dead to control the living. That was the path she had chosen and the one they would forge together in the new dawn of her reign.

The flowers in the rump of her mount waited patiently for their moment to shine.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a sucker for Edelgard and Byleth, to the point I'm hesitant to start again and play the route I'm missing just because I won't be able to play with my favorite lesbians... oh well. I hope you enjoyed this one, any comments and feedback will be appreciated.
> 
> Also, I had to mention Ingrid, she basically carried my game as a winged tanked capable of destroying five units in a row. I very much love her as well.


End file.
